1,000 guilds have killed heroic Ragnaros

GuildOx, one of the premier guild ranking and data sites for WoW raiding, reports that 1,000 guilds have defeated the heroic Ragnaros encounter in Firelands. This number represents 2% of the entire pool of active raiding guilds, as well as 4.2% of the guilds that are raiding heroic Firelands content. If that doesn't put things into perspective for you with regard to Blizzard's trying to make raiding more accessible, I don't know what will.

Interestingly, 76% of the heroic Ragnaros kills have been completed in 10-man raids, with 24% of the kills in 25-man groups. Ten-man raiding has certainly made endgame raiding significantly more accessible, and 25-man only guilds seem to be struggling to keep their numbers as high as they once were, especially when the 10-man versions of the encounters are more accessible.

While 2% is a vastly larger number than the old days of endgame raiding, the content is still out of reach for a huge amount of the raiders and raid groups out there. Heroic content is meant to be the hardest of the hard, and these numbers reflect that. Hard should not be impossible, however, which is why we are seeing such a disparity between 10- and 25-man kills. Raiding at the 25-man level requires a commitment from more people, and the wrangling involved just adds to an already complicated encounter.

Nonetheless, it's good to see raiders raiding and content actually being completed, as opposed to the old days when content was only made for a very select few people. Hopefully, one day the numbers will be higher as to better justify the creation and facilitation of more hard-mode encounters as well as even better raids. Firelands was a marked improvement in raid design over Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent, and it's good to see the numbers reflect that.

Thanks again to GuildOx for the numbers and statistics. Here are some other awesome articles to check out featuring GuildOx's data: